We were saddened to hear of the passing of science fiction legend Ray Bradbury this week. Some of our favorite authors wrote about their memories of him: Neil Gaiman wrote a piece for The Guardian and Margaret Atwood was interviewed about him at The Globe and Mail. She also wrote a piece for The Guardian.  One of our favorite bloggers, Kelly from Stacked, wrote about him over at The Hub.  We’d also like to share this wonderful video, which shows Ray Bradbury speaking on a panel at a 1971 NASA symposium.

He was truly a visionary and a wonderful human being and he will be missed.

Last week, we participated in The Armchair Audies and blogged about our predictions for the mystery category.  Well, the results are in this week and we were wrong, wrong wrong!  The Audie for the mystery category went to… Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke. Tina Fey also cleaned up, winning both audiobook of the year and best memoir/biography for Bossypants. We were also excited that Libba Bray won for best author narration in Beauty Queens. And our egos were slightly soothed by Katherine Kellgren’s win in the teen category, for her narration of The Wake of the Lorelei Lee by L.A. Meyer.

Audiobook sync is once again offering two free audiobook downloads for each week of this summer, including Anna Dressed in Blood (July 5th) and Daughter of Smoke and Bone, the Audie winner for the fantasy category (August 2nd).

And of course the big news this week which invaded all of our twitter and blog feeds was BEA. (Elsewhere in the world, gamers squeed in frightening unison about various news from E3. Book nerds paid no mind.) Both Dear Author and The Book Smugglers wrote excellent recaps of the event.

Tor/Forge announced that it will be opening a DRM-free ebook store. This article discusses why they are committed to going DRM-free: “The group talked about why going DRM-free improves author/reader relationships, strengthens relationships between publishers and retailers, and does not encourage piracy.” IPG (Independent Publishers Group) also announced that it will give its member publishers the option to produce DRM-free ebooks.  We hope to see this become a trend with major publishing companies.

A few thought-provoking articles this week: 

Maureen Johnson writes about the pros and cons (mainly the cons) of hosting or participating in blog tours.  Obviously, we don’t have a problem with blog tours since we participated in one, but she does have a lot of good points. I personally (Catie) think she might be onto something when she says that they might be a good idea for new authors, but not so much for established ones. What are your thoughts?

Gabrielle Prendergast writes about the last taboo of young adult novels and Sarah from Clear Eyes Full Shelves writes about “guilty pleasure” reads.

Would you like to become a real life gunter? Ernest Cline is offering up a 1981 Delorean to the fan dedicated and obsessed enough to locate the easter egg that he’s hidden in both the hardcover and paperback editions of his book Ready Player One. Once found, the easter egg (which is apparently a url) will lead you to the first of three increasingly difficult video game challenges!  

The world outside of books was kind of depressing this week, but it was brightened a bit by DC Comics' announcement that the original Green Lantern will be re-introduced in an alternate universe as a gay character.  Read what they had to say about it; it's kind of awesome!

A bunch of trailers for film adaptations of books have come out recently, which of course will probably inspire a few Book vs. Movie posts when they release later this year. Which ones are you all looking forward to seeing? And which ones are you dreading?

That's all for this week!  Stop by and let us know what was happening in your corner of the world!